Beginnings

On a cool spring morning in 2014, USC undergraduate students Chris Dougherty and Ryan Miller learned of the snapping shrimp's curious ability to create shock waves. Fascinated by the creature, they resolved to study the physics behind it and to recreate the phenomenon in a lab setting. Over the next year and a half, Chris and Ryan created a number of mechanical "shrimp claws" of different sizes, materials, and snapping mechanisms under the supervision of Dr. Veronica Eliasson.

As they neared the end of their undergraduate career, they began to look for successors for the project. That's when I ran into them. I had been interested in doing research for some time, but never knew how to get started or what to work on. Chris and Ryan were the former TA's of a class I had taken, and I just happened to bump into them as I was going to a professor's office hours. They told me about their project and insisted I meet their awesome professor with whom they did the research, Dr. Eliasson. After talking through the project and taking a tour of the research lab, I was sold. Around the same time, Neta Glaser and Alex Ramirez, then sophomore undergrads, attended a presentation where Dr. Eliasson was showcasing some of her students' work -- Chris and Ryan's among it.

Before we knew it, the three of us were a team and were working to make our mark on the project.

-Austin